Arie's Season Of 'The Bachelor' Is Off To The Races

Sorry, that bland joke is the best Arie Luyendyk Jr. deserves.

By Claire Fallon and Nick Offenberg

A checkered flag, a bumper sticker reading “NICE BUTT,” a girl’s heart racing: Nearly every minute of the season 22 premiere of ABC’s “The Bachelor” included a cunning little reminder that our new old Bachelor, Arie Luyendyk Jr., is a race car driver. (He’s also a realtor, of which we were reminded slightly less often.)

Arie is the Bachelor who very much needs an introduction, because when he was last part of the franchise ― on Emily Maynard’s season of “The Bachelorette” in 2012 ― a huge contingent of today’s “Bachelor” audience hadn’t even started watching the show yet. A healthy number of his contestants, like Maquel and Bekah, were still teenagers when he wooed Emily and earned the skin-crawling nickname “The Kissing Bandit.”

Paul Hebert via Getty Images

So, in an incredibly bland premiere, we took another turn around the Arie track, and were reminded that he was in love with Emily, drives race cars, sells property and kisses very photogenically. The women vied for his attention by playing it astonishingly safe: The only risky limo exit was probably Ali’s request that he smell her armpits (in service of a bad pun about “pit stops”).

Do people love “The Bachelor,” “The Bachelorette” and “Bachelor in Paradise,” or do they love to hate these shows? It’s unclear. But at “Here to Make Friends,”we both love and love to hate them — and we love to snarkily dissect each episode in vivid detail. Podcast edited by Nick Offenberg.